Payment company Stripe to acquire crypto wallet provider Privy

Stripe Inc. agreed to acquire crypto wallet provider Privy, building on the payment company’s recent acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge.

Terms of the transaction weren’t disclosed.

Privy helps companies build crypto wallets into their user experiences. Nonfungible token marketplace OpenSea, for example, uses Privy to enable customers to purchase NFTs directly from its platform. Behind the scenes, Privy creates a wallet on behalf of the consumer, which facilitates their purchase. Before the partnership, OpenSea customers needed to create an external wallet through a provider like MetaMask or Coinbase Wallet and link it to their account. The extra steps added friction for consumers and created a barrier to entry into the crypto universe. The wallets are necessary to hold NFTs and the cryptocurrencies required to buy them. Privy’s other clients include restaurant loyalty startup Blackbird and global employment firm Toku.

“When we started, wallets were powerful but inaccessible for all but the most technical,” Henri Stern, co-founder and chief executive officer of Privy, said in a statement. “Developers had to send users off-platform to get started, breaking flows and killing user conversion. That friction fundamentally constrained what could be built in crypto.”

New York-based Privy was founded by Stern and Asta Li, who was a founding engineer at Aurora before starting Privy. Stern worked as a research scientist at web3 firm Protocol Labs. The startup was founded in 2021 and has raised just over $40 million from investors including Ribbit Capital, Definition and Coinbase Ventures. Privy was last valued at $230 million in March of this year, according to data compiled by Pitchbook.

“With a unified platform, connecting Privy’s wallets to the money movement capabilities in Stripe and Bridge, we’re enormously excited to enable a new generation of global, Internet-native financial services,” Patrick Collison, Stripe’s co-founder and CEO, said in a statement.

The Privy news follows Stripe’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge, a deal which accelerated an already growing wave of enthusiasm surrounding stablecoin. Earlier this year, Stripe announced it was introducing stablecoin-funded accounts designed to help merchants hold funds and pay vendors abroad using Circle Internet Group Inc.’s USDC and the USDB stablecoin issued by Bridge itself. Similarly to Bridge, Privy will continue to operate as an independent product.

Stripe’s acquisitions signal the company’s interest in becoming a go-to vendor for clients interested in adding support for, or launching their own, crypto products at a time when everyone from large technology firms to traditional banks have expressed interest in exploring the technology. The Privy transaction is subject to closing conditions and the companies expect the deal to close in coming weeks.